HOSACK ON THE LAWS OF CONTAGION. 207 



ginning of the siege, been in perfect health, caught the infection from 

 the troops brought thither by Agnon. After a stay of forty days, 

 having, in that time, lost one thousand and fifty out of four thousand 

 men, he returned with his ships to Athens."* 



With these facts before us ; the season of the year in which the plague 

 made its first appearance, the part of the city in which it commenced, 

 the multitudes which crowded into it, and those, too, unaccustomed to 

 the air of the town, having been habituated to active employment in 

 the pure air of the country, the impure state of the atmosphere ne- 

 cessarily resulting from this condition of things, combining the evils 

 both of pestilence and war ; the disease itself being confined within the 

 walls of the city, while, at the same time, it never extended itself to the 

 neighbouring country, not even to the contiguous towns of Pelopon- 

 nesus and Bceotia, we are led to the conclusion, that an impure atmos- 

 phere is the vehicle or medium by which this disease is propagated. 



The circumstances attendant upon the plague, as it has appeared at 

 different periods in the city of Rome, are no less demonstrative of this 

 truth. I will only notice the more remarkable visitation of this disease 

 which took place in the year of Rome 290, and four hundred and sixty- 

 one years before Christ. " This," says Livy, " was a season of great dis- 

 tress; for during this year a pestilential disorder spread itself not only 

 through the city, but over the country, affecting both men and cattle 

 with equal malignity; the violence of the disorder was increased by 

 admitting into the city the cattle and the inhabitants of the country who 

 fled thither for shelter from the enemy's ravages : such a confused col- 

 lection of animals of every kind suffocated the citizens by the unusual 



* Smith's Translation of Thueydides, vol 1. p. 15& 



